Mama Bear

The feeling of milk flowing through my breasts always makes my toes tingle and my cheeks go flush. There’s no better away for a mother to get exercise then strapping the wee one in a snugly, baby heroin and fresh air. Each morning for the last three weeks I have been strapping Gus to my chest and heading out the door. The baby fat that has accumulated over my body clings to my hips and thighs like bubble gum stuck to the soul of a sneaker in a mid August heat wave. The leaves on are just starting to brake free of their buds like butterflies bursting out of their chrysalises and blessing the world with their myriad of colors. The world seemed so alive as if spring gave us all reason to breathe a little deeper. Bathing our spirits, takes us out of winter, showing us that there is a end to the darkness.

I lower my head and kiss my sleeping sons cheek. My heart swells as I think of all the years of head filled with love and laughter. I pick up the pace as I also think of all the years of chasing behind him and trying to keep him out of harms way. I entertain myself as I walk along on thoughts of heroic acts of undying motherly love. How I would morph into a momma bear and strike down any harm with one mighty swoop, protecting my offspring at any cost, sacrificing my life to save his.

My quaint neighbourhood with its song birds in the trees and budding shrubs and lily-white crocuses quickly transcend as I turned the corner onto Charles Street. It was like all the colour of spring had suddenly been fused with muddied greys browns except for the ruby red flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and the electric yellow tape that now cut through these quite streets. Deeply wounding my sense of tranquility and shaking me back in to city life. My arms cross over my infant Gus as if to shield him from the shadow of human existence. Old cracks in my heart start to tear open; my eyes blink violently as if to wash away the what my baby laden mind can not fathom.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” I shake my head "I don’t understand,” hold my son closer and try to envelope him into my very being. “Oh my god, how?” I say aloud.

There in the back seat of the squad car alone sat a women—no a girl. A child herself, blank expression on her face, eyes as wide as a pool of unknown pain.

My heart goes to her, but my mind is quick like a snake spring for behind jagged rocks ready to judge. My heart reaches out to her there is less that separates her form me, than the thin glass of the police car. I look down on the boulevard there on the fresh spring grass a black coroner’s blanket with the silhouette of a child beneath.

Why did it happen, who’s to blame? What turns a momma bear in to a monster? What can acts like this teach us; can we ever really know?

At home with both my children tucked away behind closed doors I stand staring out the window at my own reflection. How vulnerable we all are to our seas of emotions that swirl and crash within us.

by Terri Bishop